The Importance Of A Gratitude Journal Part 2: How I Do It And What I Write About
Last week I wrote “Why” I felt writing a Gratitude Journal was so important in my life.
Here is my post from last week. Make sure to reference it before or after you read today’s entry. Thank you!
I intended for that post to be an all-encompassing entry regarding the benefits of Why I do it, including the How and What I use to record. However, the entry ran long and I decided to break it up into two posts.
As I read through my original draft, I realized that I had an opportunity to publish the “benefit” first, then break down the methods of capturing, organizing, and notifying, or the “features” second.
Of course, the Why is so important in our daily lives because without it we are just going through the motions. The Why helps you to understand the reasoning of your goals before deciding the How or What you’ll do to accomplish them.
Before moving on, I like to stress that the Why should be a dominant factor in choosing to write any type of journal, or really to expect any type of benefit from gratitude journaling.
Tony Robbins’ Step 2 of the “Ultimate Success Formula” is Know Your Reasons Why. It’s the motivator of your actions and it will bring out the honesty in your desires as you write.
Method of Input
Gratitude journal writing, just like any type of journal entry can be handled in many different ways.
With the onset of mobile technology, specifically smart phones with apps that can record daily thoughts, photos, video, and more, there are literally thousands of ways to electronically keep a journal.
Even social media now records and fetches your memories.
For example, Facebook now sends you “On This Day” notifications everyday to your feed. You essentially are creating a journal of your life everyday as you share your photos and musings to the daily social media fanfare.
Many prefer to write with physical pen and paper. The internet is full of articles debating whether physical writing or electronic typing is better or worse. Here’s one that I was reading while gathering inspiration for this post.
The author here reveals some pros and cons for both forms of journaling:
..there’s something gratifying about the feel of a paper notebook. Beyond that, though, writing stimulates and engages your brain better, making it easier to retain information. Some argue that writing by hand is a more raw, authentic experience.
And then:
..you use your keyboard to get the thoughts out of your head and onto the screen. Fans of typing argue that it’s more convenient and, aside from the romanticized notion of longhand, the end product is the same.
Regardless of your preferred method of input, the MOST IMPORTANT THING is that you are taking the time to think about gratitude.
You are allowing yourself to be aware of the people and opportunity surrounding you daily, and you are making time to be appreciative of what life has to offer!
Here’s How I Do It
I tried pen and paper many many years ago, but I couldn’t create a habit out of it.
My handwriting is terrible, and I’m physically uncomfortable when I write on paper. I’m of the generation that was introduced to computers somewhere around sixth grade.
Before long I was engaged in typing classes everyday, and now as I look back on it, I realize that typing became so much more natural for me than writing.
I read blog posts from great writers that claim that they use pen and paper everyday as it gets them into a “flowstate” faster, and allows for an emptying of the brain in a much more efficient manner.
Benjamin P. Hardy speaks of this often and I appreciate his approach to morning routines, journal writing, and life lessons. Below is one of my favorite articles of his regarding this subject:
So I have chosen the electronic method.
I always have a smartphone within reaching distance. I figured, instead of flooding my brain with terrible news, negative social media, or processing email right when I get up, having a way to quickly input a gratitude journal would really be the best way to get my morning started.
On my iPhone, I use an app called Day One.
I tried a couple of other apps years ago, but Day One’s team really figured out how to minimize the pain points of syncing between devices (so my journal entries are always updated between the iPhone, iPad, and Mac computer) and they added tons of features and integration to the platform that I enjoy.
They even now have an Android app for users outside of iOS!
The Process
I could just open up Day One on my phone and roll with the gratitude, but what I learned in researching methods of electronic journaling, is that I could integrate a second app into my workflow that would prompt me at a specific time of my choosing, and ask me questions that would direct me through the process.
Removing just a little of the thinking needed to organize my gratitude journal each day, allowed me to simply hit a button, read questions from a prompt, answer them, and then the software would dump all my questions and answers into a Day One entry for me!
The app that I currently use for this method of input is called Launch Center Pro from a company called Contrast Apps LLC. The interface is simple, but under the hood you can create so many amazing actions that assist in productivity on a daily basis. Here is a screenshot of what my Launch Center Pro app looks like when I boot it up:
The 4 icons that you see that look like white bookmarks on a blue background are prompts that will allow easy workflows for Day One entries.
Behind each door I’ve set up a list of questions and a little formatting, so that when the entry is typed out, Launch Center Pro is allowed to open up the Day One app immediately and copy everything into a post. It’s pretty neat and I love the convenience.
“5min Morning” is my gratitude journal entry.
Here’s what I see when I tap that tile:
First question (like a statement that I need to finish): I am grateful for….
The second prompt looks like this:
Then the third:
I can’t quite remember where I got a notion to start including a daily affirmation, but I can tell you that I really enjoy reading my affirmations from say.. a year ago.
They are very telling around my thoughts and feelings surrounding my goals or challenges that I’m having. (Queue the silly scene from Saturday Night Live “… and dog-on-it, people like me.” HA)
All joking aside, daily affirmations can play an important part of setting up your emotions to embrace what the day holds for you.
You’re in charge of your mindset, so utilize something like this as a part of your daily gratitude and it could be helpful for your mental health.
Where does it all end up?
So after I tap on “Launch” (from my third screenshot above), my phone switches from Launch Center Pro, and opens up Day One. It takes all the input from me and lays it out in an orderly form as seen below!
- By the way, the back-end code needed in Launch Center Pro, what is called the “url scheme”, I was able to find on this website here! There are lots of url schemes for different types of entries and this was a huge resource for getting this process off the ground for me!
So.. What Am I Saying?
The What for a gratitude journal will be very specific to your daily experiences so I probably don’t need to spend a ton of time detailing what I write about every morning.
However, if I could give you a little inspiration, the following list contains a few things that I think about each morning as I’m prompted to record my gratitude.
1) Write about people that are inspiring you.
It could just be a person that took some of their time to come watch your children so that you and your spouse could have a date night.
It could be a person that gave you a phone call and made you feel great because they said they were thinking about you.
It could be the person at the grocery store that pointed out a coupon that you were unaware of that helped save you money on your last visit.
People in your life are infinite sources of inspiration to feel gratitude for.
2) Write about opportunities.
Life is moving fast and sometimes we are taking advantage of an opportunity that has presented itself, but we haven’t slowed down long enough to be grateful for it.
Where would you be without it?
What choice did you make that led to the opportunity?
Being more aware of the good side of life helps you to appreciate how far you’ve come!
3) Be thankful for your health.
Did you get up this morning?
Did you breathe fresh air?
Are you able to get up and make breakfast for the family?
There are many people that do not have this luxury. If you are alive and well, be thankful for it.
And frankly, think of a way to spread that good vibe in the presence of others.
We are only here in this world for a short time.
Be thankful that we have another day to create and live our life to the fullest!
Thanks for reading my second post on the gratitude journal! Be sure to check out the first one (link at the bottom and the top).
I would love to hear from my readers about the types of journals that you keep, or the methods in which you capture your thoughts!
Have you started a gratitude journal?
Are you seeing benefits from it yet?
Do you have any questions about the mechanics that I mentioned above, or do you have suggestions of how I should do it better? Let me know in the Responses below!
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